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‘Nothing worked’

October 9, 2011 By

Nathan Glazer’s Warning should be heeded, writes Howard Husock in City Journal.  In The Limits of Social Policy, the Harvard sociologist reviewed the research on education, training and poverty programs including the Job Corps, Head Start, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the school breakfast program and early-childhood education programs.

“At least some of the states known for high expenditure on education and social needs have shown remarkably poor records.”

“After having done badly in schooling, we do not do well at making up for the failure through work-training programs, though we have certainly tried.”

And crucially: “The evaluations of specific programs that were available during the first ten years after the launching of the [War on Poverty] confirmed the verdict: nothing worked, and, in particular, nothing that one did in education worked.”

A neoconservative, Glazer came to see social policy as grandiose and too focused on “remaking” individuals instead of supporting families, writes Husock.

 Any social policy, he writes in Limits, must be judged against “the simple reality that every piece of social policy substitutes for some traditional arrangement, whether good or bad, a new arrangement in which public authorities take over, at least in part, the role of the family, of the ethnic and neighborhood group, of voluntary associations.”

Traditional agents are weakened and the needy are encouraged to depend on the government, Glazer wrote. That increases the demand for more social programs, which inevitably fail to produce the desired results.

 

 

Filed Under: Careers, Education, Family Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

High-quality preschool pays off

February 5, 2011 By

The Chicago Public Schools’ federally funded Child-Parent Centers, started in 1967, provide high-quality preschool and after-school programs for disadvantaged children in early elementary school. The program generates $4 to $11 of benefits for every dollar it costs, concludes the National Institutes of Health.

CPC facilities, located in or near elementary schools in poor Chicago neighborhoods, are staffed by certified teachers and offer instruction in reading and math, small group activities and educational field trips for children ages 3 through 9. The centers also provide meals and health screening. Center staff offer support services such as parenting or job skills training to parents and encourage them to volunteer in the classroom and to help supervise student field trips.

The researchers analyzed education, employment, criminal justice and child welfare records for the participants through to age 26. A previous analysis found that children who had been enrolled in the centers were more likely to go to college,work full time and have health insurance and less likely to go to prison or suffer from depression.

However, the study did not assign children randomly, so it’s possible the CPC children had more motivated parents.  The non-CPC children went to another program or did not attend preschool.

“These findings suggest that high-quality education programs focused on preschool through the elementary grades may produce long term benefits not only for the children enrolled, but for society as well,” said Alan E. Guttmacher, director of the . . .  NIH institute that funded the study. “The findings also provide evidence that combining early education with job skills training and other instruction for parents also may increase benefits for children.”

Ninety-three percent of the children in the study were African-American and 7 percent were Hispanic.

Researchers estimated the value of increased lifetime earnings, taxes paid on these earnings and savings on schooling (fewer children repeating a grade), health care, depression treatment, child welfare services and criminal-justice costs.

Lifetime benefits were greater for children who started CPC in preschool compared to those who started in elementary school.  Greater benefits also were found for certain subsets, such as boys, children living in higher-poverty areas and those in high-risk homes.

Compared to Head Start, which doesn’t produce lasting benefits for children, the CPCs are much more intensive and long-term and provide more parental support. The average preschool isn’t a game changer for very disadvantaged children. They need more.

Via Shanker Blog.

Filed Under: Children Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Preschoolers average 4 hours of TV daily

November 13, 2010 By

Preschoolers watch TV for four hours a day, on average, reports a new study, “Preschoolers’ Total Daily Screen Time at Home and by Type of Child Care,” published in Pediatrics.

Children in home-based child care average 5.6 hours a day; the average for parent-only care is 4.4 hours.  Children in day-care centers spend less time watching TV.  The study reported a significant decline in TV hours for low-income children in Head Start.

Overall, black children watch considerably more TV; educated parents’ children watch considerably less.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents allow “no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day” for preschoolers.


Filed Under: Children, Parenting Tagged With: , , , ,

Don’t give up on Promise Neighborhoods

August 21, 2010 By

Don’t give up on Promise Neighborhoods, argues Paul Tough in a New York Times op-ed. The initiative aims to create a network of support services — child care, parenting classes, health clinics, etc. — and high-quality schools in 20 high-poverty neighborhoods.  The model is the Harlem Children’s Zone. Tough wrote the book on the zone, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest To Change Harlem and America.

Last month, a Senate subcommittee cut more than 90 percent of the $210 million that President Obama had requested for Promise Neighborhoods.

A Brookings report questioning the Harlem Children Zone’s effectiveness in raising student achievement proved devastating.

There’s no proof Promise Neighborhoods will work, Tough concedes, but there’s some hope. If Congress is willing to spend billions on Title I and Head Start, proven failures, why not a few hundred million on a new idea? (One could argue Model Cities tried this idea from 1966-74.)

According to a new report (pdf) by Educational Testing Service, the combined Title I and Head Start budgets grew in inflation-adjusted dollars from $1.7 billion in 1970 to $13.8 billion in 2000. This year’s budget was $21.7 billion.

Head Start, which provides preschool programs to poor families, is a prime example of the Senate committee’s true attitude toward evidence-based decision-making. In January, the Health and Human Services Department released a study of Head Start’s overall impact (pdf). The conclusions were disturbing. By the end of first grade, the study found, Head Start graduates were doing no better than students who didn’t attend Head Start. “No significant impacts were found for math skills, pre-writing, children’s promotion, or teacher report of children’s school accomplishments or abilities in any year,” the report concluded.

Nonetheless, the Senate allocated $8.2 billion for Head Start in 2011, almost a billion dollars more than in 2010.

Rather than stick with the same strategies and hope things somehow magically change, Congress should find more room in the budget to support the Obama administration’s declared approach: to try new strategies and abandon failed ones; to expand and test programs with strong evidence of success, even if that evidence is inconclusive; and to learn from mistakes and make adjustments as we go.

Trimming the growth in Head Start would fund Promise Neighborhood pilots. Perhaps organizers will study Model Cities’ problems and do it differently this time. Or we could just give the Harlem experiment more time to prove itself.

Filed Under: Children, Education Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ideology trumps evidence

February 5, 2010 By

President Obama declared in an education speech last year that his administration would “use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: it’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” Unfortunately, writes Jay P. Greene in City Journal, “the test that seems to guide the Obama administration’s education priorities is not whether a policy works, but whether it serves a political constituency.”

Empirical evidence shows that D.C. vouchers work; that program should be expanded, not killed. The evidence also shows that Head Start is a long-running failure; that program should be wound down, not funded with new billions.

He suggests diverting a few hundred million dollars from Head Start to a reauthorized D.C. voucher program.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

Head Start study shows no lasting gains

January 15, 2010 By

Head Start’s benefits fade by first grade, concludes a major study on the $7 billion-a-year program’s impact. While Head Start participants have a social, emotional and cognitive edge over similar kids who didn’t participate in pre-K, according to a 2005 study, the advantages don’t last long.

“The next few weeks are probably going to be rocky ones for the Head Start community,” writes Early Ed Watch, which suggested K-3 teachers aren’t trained to help Head Start grads move forward.

The mainstream media have ignored the study, complains Andrew Coulson of Cato @ Liberty. I did spot a column in the Kansas City Star.

Update: Education Week’s Mary Ann Zehr has more on the study.

It’s time to “terminate, consolidate or reform” federal preschool programs before ‘investing’ more dollars, writes Dan Lips of the Heritage Foundation.

Jay P. Greene has more detail on the study.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: ,

Head Start seeks bail-out

January 8, 2009 By

Don’t bail-out Head Start, advises Checker Finn on Flypaper.

The National Head Start Association wants to get $4.3 billion for Head Start in the economic stimulus package.

Forty years of evaluations have demonstrated that Head Start does next to nothing to prepare its young charges — needy three- and four-year-olds — to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, and that whatever gains it yields quickly dissipate once the kids enroll in school.

The major reason it’s ineffective as a pre-school program is because it has no curriculum and little cognitive content, because most of its staffers are “child care workers,” not teachers, and because the National Head Start Association itself has defied every effort by policymakers to transform it into the pre-literacy program that it ought to be and that these kids truly need.

If funding were tied to a cognitive curriculum, would Head Start leaders buy into it?

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,